The U.S. Park Police officers who shot and killed McLean resident Bijan Ghaisar in 2017 are seeking to get out of the employment limbo they’ve been stuck in since the shooting almost seven years ago.
Officers Alejandro Amaya and Lucas Vinyard filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior (DOI) in the U.S. District Court for D.C. on July 10, seeking to force their employer to make a final decision on their job status.
First reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday (July 30), the complaint accuses the Interior Department of an “unreasonable delay” in determining whether to fire Amaya and Vinyard, who have been on paid administrative leave since Ghaisar’s Nov. 17, 2017 shooting.
The Interior Department notified the officers in November 2021 that it planned to terminate them, but DOI Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Safety, Resource Protection and Emergency Services Lisa Branum, who was designated as the deciding official, has yet to act on the proposal, according to the lawsuit.
“The DOI and its Deciding Official, Lisa Branum, have unreasonably delayed action on the proposal that has now been pending for more than two years,” attorneys representing the officers wrote in the complaint. “Indeed, it seems that the DOI has no intention of issuing a decision at all, preferring to have Officer Vinyard and Officer Amaya remain quietly on indefinite leave rather than do as it must and return them to work.”
Ghaisar, a 25-year-old Langley High School graduate who worked as an accountant in McLean, was shot five times at Fort Hunt Road and Alexandria Avenue in Fort Hunt following a pursuit by Park Police officers, who had been dispatched to a hit-and-run crash on the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
Court documents later indicated that police were initially told that Ghaisar was responsible for the crash before the dispatcher clarified that his vehicle was the one that got hit.
The Park Police officers fired a total of nine shots based on a dashboard camera video released in January 2018 by the Fairfax County Police Department, which had officers assisting in the pursuit. Ghaisar died at Inova Fairfax Hospital on Nov. 27, 2017.
Amaya and Vinyard were identified as the two officers who fired their guns in 2019 after Ghaisar’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2018. That lawsuit was settled in April 2023 with the federal government agreeing to pay the family $5 million.
After federal prosecutors declined to pursue criminal charges in 2019, Amaya and Vinyard were indicted by a Fairfax County grand jury in October 2020 for manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm, but a judge later dismissed the charges, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares dropped an appeal in 2022.
Though Ghaisar’s family, elected officials and other advocates urged the Justice Department to reopen the case, federal officials announced in June 2022 that there wasn’t “an adequate basis” for reopening the investigation.
In their lawsuit, Amaya and Vinyard argue that the Interior Department’s proposed dismissal of them would go against its “internal policies” and the conclusions of the Justice Department, Miyares’s office and the U.S. District Court judge who dismissed Fairfax County’s case, who found the officers had “responded reasonably” to the danger they felt the unarmed Ghaisar presented.
The complaint says the Interior Department hasn’t explained its delay in following through on its proposed terminations, arguing that the lack of action prevents the officers from appealing or seeking arbitration.
“The Defendants’ unreasonable delay in issuing a final disciplinary decision has damaged the Officers’ careers with the U.S. Park Police,” the complaint says. “It has caused them to suffer a loss of pay, promotion opportunities, career advancement, and has resulted in great stress and hardship.”
An Interior Department spokesperson said they had no comment on the matter.
In a comment to the Washington Post, Ghaisar’s mother called the lawsuit “appalling” when the officers were “not only were not prosecuted but rewarded with years of paid vacation while Bijan was shot in the head for a fender bender.”
